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Are the pro-Hamas protests in violation of Canada’s hate speech and terrorism laws?

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19 minute read

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Joe Adam George

Regardless of how one feels about free speech, pro-Hamas protests have revealed some hidden, uncomfortable truths about many of our fellow Canadians

Rallies blocking traffic at major intersections. Protestors intimidating businesses and community centres. Radicalized student unions paralyzing college and university campuses. Hateful and incendiary messages dominating social media. Pro-Palestine agitators ripping down posters of hostages and waving the flags of banned terrorist organizations like Hamas and Taliban.

These sustained public acts of malice – specifically targeting Israel and the Jewish community –have become the new norm in Canada in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that Hamas, a listed foreign terrorist organization in Canada, committed against 1,400 unsuspecting civilians in Israel, in addition to taking over 240 hostages. Calls for a global “Day of Jihad” and similar rabble-rousing by Hamas sympathizers and pro-Palestine groups have only added fuel to the raging fire.

Invigorated by the brutal events of that fateful day, a populist, mostly Muslim Arab faction, has found a “solidarity ally” in the radical left – a rather odd symbiosis given these groups have very little in common (barring of course, their mutual sadistic hatred of Jews and desire to see the annihilation of Israel). Their oft-frightful vituperations, which include ostensible acts of glorifying terrorism, antisemitism, and intimidation of Jews (a protected minority community in Canada) has left many mild-mannered Canadians aghast, drawing parallels with Kristallnacht (a wave of coordinated pogroms that took place 85 years ago in Nazi Germany and its annexed territories).

From leftist students cheering for “intifada” (violent resistance) and branding Hamas terrorists as “martyrs”, to multiple instances of arsonshootingsassaultdeath threats and calls for the boycotting of Jewish-owned businesses, the last few weeks have been a living nightmare for Canadian Jews as they continue to be inundated with vitriol in the streets and on social media.

Much ink has been spilled debating whether these acts and their perpetrators are in violation of Canada’s hate speech and terrorism laws, considering that Canadians (Jewish and non-Jewish alike) are quickly becoming accustomed to seeing blatant expressions of antisemitism and hatred on a daily basis.

Do flying Hamas and Taliban flags cross a line of criminality into “supporting” a listed terrorist entity? Can the infamous “machine gun earrings lady” be prosecuted for glorifying and promoting terrorism for publicly singing the praises of the Hamas terrorists? Should the former Carleton University economics professor who tweeted that Israelis brought the horrific events of Oct. 7 “on themselves” be charged for hate speech? Can the actions of the protestors who targeted and harassed Jewish coffee shops and delis in Toronto be construed as the “public incitement of hatred”? Could those who chant the unambiguously genocidal slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” be viewed as “advocating genocide”?

The answer to all these questions is a likely “no”.

Josh DeHaas, counsel with the Canadian Constitution Foundation, told me in an interview last week that Canada’s existing hate speech laws are poorly understood by many. Moreover, he pointed out that the recent explosion of vitriol caused by the Israel-Hamas conflict is “a new phenomenon” not just for regular Canadians, but also for the law enforcement agencies grappling with the unprecedented wave of vitriol.

“They have their work cut out for them because hatred is a notoriously difficult concept to define,” DeHaas said. “We know the bar for criminal hate speech in Canada is very high but, despite multiple court decisions discussing hate speech, we still don’t know exactly how high”.

“If you look at Twitter, you’ll quickly see that what counts as hateful is in the eye of the beholder. Feminists who advocate against wearing hijabs are often accused of engaging in hateful conduct against Muslims; but, to those feminists, advocating that women must or should wear hijabs is hateful towards women,” DeHaas explained. “Another example comes from the debate over whether transgender women should be in certain spaces—both sides accuse the other side regularly of engaging in hate speech. It’s unlikely this is illegal in Canada but it’s hard for regular people to know.”

“This difficulty with defining hatred leads to a chilling effect, since people fearing they will cross the line into criminality are worried about saying anything controversial. And that’s a huge problem for freedom of expression, since the purpose of freedom of expression is to allow for controversial ideas to be debated, and we can’t debate these things if people are afraid to speak,” he added.

“The subjective nature of what counts as hatred is one of the reasons why we at the Canadian Constitution Foundation are wary of legal restrictions on speech,” explained DeHaas. “That said, the Supreme Court of Canada has stated that hatred can be outlawed if it’s limited to those extreme manifestations of the emotion as described by the words ‘detestation’ and ‘vilification’.”

DeHaas cited the example of the 2013 R v Whatcott case, wherein then-Justice Marshall Rothstein of the Supreme Court offered some guidance on when speech will cross the line from merely offensive or humiliating into something that warrants placing a “reasonable limit” on freedom of expression. Criminal hate speech, wrote Justice Rothstein in the decision, includes “representations that expose a target group to detestation tend to inspire enmity and extreme ill-will against them, which goes beyond mere disdain or dislike.”

Justice Rothstein added that such outlawed speech may be identified by looking for the “hallmarks of hatred.” This may include “vilify(ing) the targeted group by blaming its members for the current problems in society, alleging that they are a powerful menace, arguing that they are carrying out secret conspiracies to gain global control or plotting to destroy western civilizations, saying that they are a parasitic race, liars, cheats, criminals or thugs, genetically inferior, lesser beasts, or sub-human filth.”

“‘Hatred’ is objectively defined so it is not supposed to matter whether an individual found the speech or tweet hateful,” DeHaas explained. “What is supposed to matter is whether a reasonable person, aware of the context and circumstances surrounding the expression, would view it as exposing the protected group – for example, Jews and people of Israeli origin – to hatred by others.”

“According to the Court, hate speech laws aren’t meant to censor; they’re meant to prevent harm that can result from exposing a group to hatred, which, in the Court’s view, can lead to exclusion of members of the group from society or even worse consequences like the Holocaust,” he added. “However, it’s still very difficult to know exactly where the line between merely offensive speech, which is legal, and speech that counts as the most extreme forms of vilification and detestation, which can land a person in prison.”

While Section 319 (2) of the Criminal Code is the main hate speech provision outlawing “wilful promotion of hatred”, charges and convictions under this section are relatively rare. Section 319 (2.1) is a new and untested provision specifically targeting antisemitism. Passed by Parliament just last year, it prohibits any individual or group from “communicating statements, other than in private conversation, [that] wilfully promotes antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust”. Both offences carry a two-year term of imprisonment.

Another relevant statute, Section 318 (1), carries a five-year prison sentence for anyone “advocating or promoting genocide”, defined as: “committing with intent to destroy in whole or in part any identifiable group [by] killing members of the group or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction”.

DeHaas said the comments made by Montreal-based Imam Adil Charkaoui to a crowd on Oct. 28, which have been translated online as “Allah, destroy the arrogant Zionists…Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them” may have breached Section 318 (1). That will likely depend on whether “Zionists” counts as a section of the public distinguished by race, religion or national or ethnic origin, he added.

This stated, DeHaas also cautioned that individuals have rarely been charged or convicted under any of the three hate crime statutes mentioned above as they all have high legal bars for prosecutors to prove criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt. Besides, these offences are also unusual in the sense that they require the Attorney General of the province where the alleged offense took place to sign off before prosecution. (DeHaas noted that the police, not the Crown, lay charges in the case of most criminal offenses).

In addition to these provisions, any criminal offence that is motivated by hatred (e.g., assault, criminal harassment) can have the aggravated hate charge applied, possibly leading to a harsher sentence in the case of a conviction. For example, Calgary police charged a protester last week with “uttering threats” against two Jewish community organizations. Toronto Police, meanwhile, have pressed charges against a man who allegedly assaulted a person affixing pro-Israel posters to a utility pole. Both men, if convicted, could receive a tougher sentence if found to have been motivated by hatred.

Some lawyers have raised the possibility that those who publicly voice support for Hamas could be charged under Section 83 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits promoting terrorist activity. For example, some have suggested that the “machine gun earrings lady” (identified in media reports as Essra Karam) can be charged under Section 83 for saying “I support Hamas” and calling Hamas terrorists “true fighters” in an interview with The Rebel’s David Menzies.

DeHaas, who stresses that he is not an expert in terrorism laws, is nonetheless skeptical that merely stating support for a listed terrorist group, as this woman has clearly done, would violate the terrorism provisions of the Criminal Code.

“However, I do think it would be appropriate for authorities to investigate whether she is supporting Hamas in a more material sense by fundraising or recruiting for Hamas at the rally, because that is clearly illegal, and if she is not a Canadian citizen, it is possible that she could be inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act”, DeHaas added.

Dan Stanton, Director of the National Security Program at the University of Ottawa and a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) manager, agreed with DeHaas’ assessment and on that same note, expressed bewilderment at how dangerous and unreformed jihadists like Montreal’s Charkaoui could acquire full Canadian citizenship and walk around freely spewing hate; especially given his criminal track record, which includes stints in prison for alleged al-Qaeda ties and promoting radical Islam with the goal of exhorting people to go overseas to join terror groups.

Stanton also raised a worrying point – the pro-Hamas rallies and demonstrations are likely to have radicalized and galvanized certain left-wing and Islamic extremists, which could potentially pose a serious threat to the national security of Canada and its allies, should these individuals conduct lone-wolf attacks, fundraise, recruit or travel abroad to participate in overseas conflicts.

Since its vicious attack on Israel, Hamas has made its aspirations to create a “global Islamic caliphate” quite clear. It is little wonder why Hamas is viewed as “the new ISIS” – an observation FBI Director Christopher Wray made during his testimony before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee late last month, telling the Committee, “We assess that the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration, the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago”.

This warning should be taken seriously by the Trudeau government as, unlike in Europe, where terror attacks have generally been carried out by refugees or illegal immigrants, Canada’s most serious threats are likely to come from radicalized homegrown extremists. However, Phil Gurski, a former senior strategic terrorism analyst with CSIS, said the Trudeau government’s inept handling of the conflict and general apathy towards its imperiled Jewish community proves it hasn’t learned from its recent experiences with Chinese and (alleged) Indian interference and, instead, continues to prioritize vote-bank politics over Canada’s national security and longstanding ties with Israel.

So, what does all this mean for Canada’s Jews and other Canadians? Do they continue to put up with these despicable acts of vitriol and violence and wait until someone is grievously hurt or killed like the 69-year-old Jewish man in Los Angeles?

Both Gurski and Stanton remarked that the top priority for law enforcement agencies and all levels of government should be to reassure Jewish communities by taking meaningful preventive measures to ensure their safety and security. They added that CSIS is likely to be tracking suspicious individuals and extremists who were already under the scanner, and also investigating for clues that indicate any fundraising or recruitment activities being conducted by Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS sympathizers in Canada.

At a campaign reception in Minnesota last week, U.S. President Joe Biden said rather profoundly: “You know, about every six, eight generations, we go through a phenomenal change. What happens in the next two, three, four years is going to determine what the next four or five decades are going to look like.”

Regardless of how one feels about free speech and the hate crime statutes, the pro-Hamas protests have revealed some hidden, uncomfortable truths about many of our fellow Canadians – their blind hatred of Jews and contempt for law and order, historical facts (pertaining to the Israel-Palestine conflict), and western values and principles. Undeniably, the ancient evil of antisemitism poses an existential threat to Canadian values, unity and security but we can remain optimistic that these violent protests would serve as the inflection point Canada desperately needs to dismantle such deep-rooted, hideous ideologies and the systems that perpetuate them; which would determine if its long-term future remains in the civilized world or with those who lionize the women-raping and baby-killing barbarians of Hamas.

Joe Adam George is a former foreign policy and national security research intern with the Washington, D.C.-based policy think tank, Hudson Institute, and a communications strategist.

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Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Part II

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By Lynne Cohen

“The most serious charges in Canada of a criminal nature often take less than 30 days [to resolve at trial]. That this has gone on for 45 days…must be considered one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian legal history.”

More people are becoming painfully familiar with the expression “the process is the punishment” – a legal or regulatory matter of such cost, complexity, length and personal stress that, regardless of its formal outcome, the targeted person emerges damaged, sometimes irreparably. It is all-but impossible not to attach this label to the nearly three-year-long prosecution of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, which has included a marathon 13-month-long trial, now awaiting its verdict. In Part II of this series, Lynne Cohen takes readers inside the Ottawa Courthouse – talking to the defendants, their lawyers and other experts – illuminating the Crown’s relentless pursuit of the Freedom Convoy organizers. (Part I can be read here. )
The criminal trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber finally got underway on September 5, 2023, more than a year-and-a-half after they were arrested during the Freedom Convoy protest in February 2022. By the time their trial began, Crown prosecutor Moiz Karimjee had been replaced with Assistant Crown Attorneys Tim Radcliffe and Siohbain Wetscher. While the change in personnel might have seemed like welcome news to the defendants – given Karimjee’s heavy-handed pre-trial manoeuvres and his previous generous donations to the Liberal Party of Canada, as explained in the first of this two-part series – there was no appreciable alteration in the Crown’s tactics or overall strategy. It remained a no-holds-barred, drag-’em-out affair.

Initially scheduled for a tidy 10 days, it quickly became apparent the Crown’s new team had no intention of moving swiftly or efficiently. Three days in, Wetscher and Radcliffe were still introducing a vast array of evidence, mostly Facebook and TikTok posts plus thousands of text messages seized from the pair. The defence rightly argued all of this should have been revealed before the trial started. A week in, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey griped that her trial was already at risk of going “off the rails”. The Crown’s late disclosures left her feeling “very unhappy,” agreeing with the defence that “this should have been done well before the trial.”

“I want a not guilty. Period”: Despite the Crown’s plan to drag out their trial for as long as possible, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were determined to see it through to the very end. Shown, Lich (at front left) and Barber (at front right) walk to court, November 1, 2022. (Source of photo: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

By the start of the second week, Lich’s defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon tried to hurry things along by agreeing to accept some of the Crown’s arguments regarding the protest’s impact on residents in downtown Ottawa. “There were individuals who interfered with the enjoyment of property,” he admitted, suggesting the two sides put together an agreed statement of facts. Wetscher “respectfully declined” this offer. She instead promised to produce a lengthy parade of witnesses to complain about the garbage, noise, smells and congestion associated with the protest. Horn-honking by the truckers was to be a particular focus, given how much it irritated those living nearby.

Even Perkins-McVey thought this tactic was a waste of time. “I just don’t know if this evidence is going to have the weight that you hope,” she informed Wetscher, noting that Lich and Barber had no interactions with any of the prospective witnesses. Worried that her trial could “run on ad infinitum,” the judge allowed Wetscher to call just five local residents and imposed clear limits on what they could discuss.

As the proceedings dragged on over the ensuing months for reasons both mundane and mysterious – the strange disappearance of internal police emails supporting defence arguments that the truckers were initially welcomed by the Ottawa Police Service and shown where to park was one such example – the assembled court watchers and journalists in Courtroom 5 at 161 Elgin Street began to speculate that Lich and Barber’s constitutional right to a prompt trial might be in jeopardy. This offered a potential escape hatch for the accused.

One regular unconvinced by this prospect was Lich herself. As she explained to C2C during a courtroom break, the idea of getting off on a technicality was anathema to her. “I don’t want a ‘Jordon’ decision,” she said, referring to a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that sets time limits of 18 to 30 months for most criminal trials. “I want a not guilty. Period. And I am not afraid. What are they going do, put me in prison? Been there, done that. If they can’t frighten you, they have no power over you.” Prior to the trial, Lich had already spent 49 days in jail.

Lich’s determination to see her trial out to its conclusion regardless of delays or hurdles likely posed a significant obstacle to the Crown. Considering the fury with which Canada’s legal system has pursued her and Barber for the relatively minor crimes of mischief and obstructing police during the Freedom Convoy protest, it seems plausible the Crown’s goal from the start was to bully them into accepting a plea bargain simply to bring the interminable prosecution to a close. Given its benign reputation but steep potential consequences, criminal mischief seems the ideal charge for this sort of brinkmanship. Set against a possible 10-year prison term, the prospect of pleading guilty to a modest-sounding crime and accepting some modest punishment might appeal to many.

“Even a rich person would not do this kind of trial”: Rebel News’ Erza Levant argues that the length of the case mounted by the Crown would likely have exhausted even the resources of multi-millionaires. Only the broad-based fundraising efforts of groups such as Rebel News and The Democracy Fund allowed Lich and Barber to counter the Crown’s strategy and avoid a plea bargain. (Source of left screenshot: Rebel News)

But Lich and Barber have refused to play the Crown’s game. Not only have they signalled a steely determination to let the trial play out to its end, they also have the financial resources to back up their resolve. Besides their own substantial fundraising efforts, both have benefited from the support of organizations such as Rebel News and The Democracy Fund in raising money for their lawyers.

As Rebel News’ Ezra Levant explained in an interview with another publication at the Ottawa Courthouse, “A poor person could not afford the nearly half million dollars needed to run a year-long trial. Even a rich person would not do this kind of trial, would not spend half a million dollars for this. They’d all cut a deal.” The decidedly working-class Lich and Barber are neither rich nor poor. But neither are they interested in cutting a deal. Halfway through the trial, Barber told C2C that he’d spent $30,000 of his own money on legal fees, as well as having received more than that from donations and other sources.

Unable to intimidate the pair or run them out of money, the prosecution had to get creative.

Get Carter

In November 2023, with the trial now two months old, the Crown unveiled an additional tactic to ensnare Lich and Barber: what is known as a Carter application. Named for a 1982 Supreme Court case involving a marijuana smuggling ring in the Maritimes, a Carter application sets out a series of steps and evidentiary standards required to link individuals together in a broader criminal conspiracy. Significantly, the focus of the Carter application in this case appeared to be on the sole charge that Barber faces alone.

Lich and Barber together are charged with committing mischief, obstructing police, blocking a highway and counselling others to do all these things. Barber is additionally charged with one count of counselling others to ignore a court order. On February 7, in the midst of the protest, local residents received a court injunction prohibiting gratuitous horn-honking in downtown Ottawa. Two days later, Barber posted a TikTok video in which he said, “Grab that horn switch and don’t let go. Let that f—–’ horn go no matter what.” As Toronto criminal defence lawyer Ari Goldkind observes in an interview, this particular charge presents a “problem” for Barber: he is explicitly calling for protesters to violate the injunction. Of all the charges faced by the pair, this seems the most likely to stick. The issue for the Crown – given its palpable animosity towards Lich – is that it only sticks to Barber.

Amid the mountains of social media and other evidence collated and presented by the Crown, there is none that Lich ever encouraged anyone to break any court order or injunction. “There’s not one word emanating [from] Tamara Lich that she even said ‘honking’ or ‘horns’,” Greenspon pointed out during the trial. Quite the opposite. The evidence repeatedly shows Lich counselling others to remain lawful and respectful.

The Carter gambit: Midway through the trial, the Crown introduced a Carter application, a novel legal manoeuvre meant to ensnare Lich in a crime only Barber is alleged to have committed. Shown at top, the text of the TikTok video from Barber encouraging truckers to blow their horns following a court injunction against gratuitous horn-honking. (Source of bottom photo: JulieK2/Shutterstock)

The Carter argument, however, may provide the Crown with a sneaky way around this inconvenient lack of proof. According to Goldkind, Carter “basically uses the actions of one of the co-conspirators to obtain a conviction against the other.” If the Carter application succeeds in establishing a conspiracy scenario, a conviction for Barber on this single charge could then be applied to Lich as well. Even if she never did anything of the kind. Perkins-McVey has said she will rule on the Carter application when she renders her final judgement. And while such a legal manoeuvre appears to violate the principles of natural justice, it could be the Crown’s best and only shot at finding Lich guilty.

This is why it has been so important for the prosecution to show Lich and Barber together as co-leaders of the protest, as was the focus of the 106-slide PowerPoint presentation shown during the Crown’s closing arguments. “They’re not ordinary members of the occupation,” [emphasis added] Radcliffe explained in his final submission, using an inflammatory mischaracterization of the protest favoured by the government and other Freedom Convoy opponents. “They are leaders, publicly identified as such.”

This also explains the Crown’s odd fixation with pronouns. The prosecution submitted numerous examples of Barber and Lich using terms such as “we” and “us”, including when Lich said on February 3, “We plan to be here for the long haul.” According to Radcliffe, “that ‘we’ pronoun was endless,” and he claimed this proves their combined leadership role, as opposed to, say, their merely holding common views or expressing solidarity with other protesters.

Duelling definitions: Assistant Crown Attorney Tim Radcliffe (middle) claimed Lich’s catch-phrase “Hold the line” was a war-cry meant to incite open rebellion, while her defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon (right) said it was simply an encouragement for protesters to carry on. (Sources of photos: (middle) IAP; (right) The Canadian Press/Patrick Doyle)

Radcliffe also engaged in a lengthy disquisition about the meaning of Lich’s catch-phrase “Hold the line.” According to the Crown, it was a war-cry meant to incite open rebellion; Radcliffe claimed the term actually “crossed the line” by encouraging illegal behaviour. According to Greenspon, however, “Saying ‘Hold the line’ was a way of encouraging demonstrators not to give up.” Perkins-McVey, for her part, observed that it could simply mean, “Stay true to your values.” The judge also noted that she’d heard police use the same phrase during crowd control efforts.

The frequency with which the judge engaged in often-pointed debate with the Crown attorneys seems noteworthy. Early in the trial, Radcliffe attempted to turn an obvious joke told on TikTok about how the protest was about to move to Toronto into further proof of nefarious purpose. Perkins-McVey quickly admonished him for his lack of imagination. “Reacting to a joke is not a crime,” she remarked offhandedly. She also went out of her way to scold him for imputing unproven radical or violent motives onto Lich and Barber. “They were moderate, that’s why [city] officials reached out to them,” Perkins-McVey explained. Another time, in response to Radcliffe’s assertion that the protest was “unlawful” based on statements made by the police, she wryly shot back, “Just because police say it was unlawful doesn’t make it so.”

Looking out for the accused: During the trial, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey frequently sparred with the Crown attorneys, admonishing them for imputing motives, missing jokes or wasting her time. As a defence lawyer in Ottawa prior to being called to the bench, Perkins-McVey was well-known for protecting the rights of her clients. (Source of photo: Bluewater Association for Lifelong Learning)

What appears to be the judge’s simmering frustration with the Crown’s interminable and often exaggerated arguments is fully in keeping with Perkins-McVey’s legal reputation. As a high-profile defence lawyer prior to being appointed to the bench, she was known throughout the Ottawa legal community for her determination on behalf of her clients’ rights. This story’s author, while an articling student, once crossed paths with Perkins-McVey in the Ottawa Courthouse lobby. “Someone has to stick up for them!” the future judge yelled from across the room, deep in a private argument. When your correspondent impishly asked “Who?” she responded to everyone within earshot, “The accused!”

The Defence Speaks at Last

Once the Crown rested its case, the defence – comprised of Diane Magas and Marwan Younes for Barber plus Greenspon and Eric Granger for Lich – introduced no further evidence and called no witnesses. Neither Lich nor Barber took the stand in their own defence, as is their right without prejudice. This move shortened the trial considerably and further emphasized that its excessive length to date was almost entirely the prosecution’s doing. It also required the Crown to go first during closing arguments, as is recounted in Part I of this series.

When the defence’s turn came, Barber’s lawyers spoke for the first two days, followed by another two days for Lich’s team. Granger spent his time explaining how his client never did anything illegal. “Leading a convoy of trucks to Ottawa is not unlawful,” he noted. “There is no evidence of Lich even being in a vehicle or parking in a vehicle. There is no evidence of her honking horns or emitting any exhaust. There is no evidence of any Ottawa residents having any interactions with Lich. No evidence of her personally obstructing a peace officer.”

Greenspon followed Granger and began with his reading of the dozens of previous mischief cases assembled by the Crown as legal precedent for the charges against Lich and Barber. None of them, he said, involved protesters “told where to park and where to stay, [and] then prosecuted for parking or staying” in those spots, he noted. The level of official direction provided to the protesters was unprecedented; Greenspon then displayed the maps given to the truckers by police showing “staging areas” around downtown Ottawa designated for their exclusive use. “Can it be said that in following the instructions of the OPS, that they weren’t in compliance with the very plan Ottawa police gave them?” he wondered. How could anyone be arrested for following police orders?

Is it against the law to obey the police? As Greenspon argued during his final summation, the Ottawa Police Service initially directed the truckers to park in designated staging areas, implying that the protest had official approval. At top, police-erected fencing demarcating the protest zone; at bottom, police mingle with protesters during the first days of the protest. (Sources of photos: (top) Gary A Corcoran Arts/Shutterstock; (bottom) Benoit Daoust/Shutterstock)

“What Tamara Lich encouraged was entirely lawful,” Greenspon continued. While she stands accused of counselling others to break the law, the evidence collected by the Crown itself points in the other direction. He noted her efforts to register the truckers and implement “a signed code of conduct.” Even more significant is the agreement she struck with Ottawa mayor Jim Watson to begin voluntarily removing trucks from Parliament Hill. The deal was signed before the imposition of the Emergencies Act. This is what Greenspon referred to as “moving day” in a telephone interview with C2C soon after the trial started. “The Emergencies Act was completely unnecessary,” he told C2C. “By February 12 there had been an agreement between Tamara Lich and the mayor of Ottawa to reduce the size of the footprint of the trucks…and it actually started to happen the same day as the invocation.”

Throughout the Freedom Convoy event, Greenspon told the court in his summation, Lich encouraged protesters to remain peaceful and “show respect for police officers.” All the Crown can prove, he asserted, is that “Tamara Lich knew there were lots of trucks that were impeding traffic, and as far as anyone could tell, the Ottawa police did nothing about it.” As for the Crown’s Carter gambit meant to ensnare Lich in Barber’s solitary transgression, Greenspon charged, “It is unprecedented for the Crown to take a democratic lawful purpose and try to juxtapose that with acts by other individuals.”

Early in the trial, Perkins-McVey had mused that the crux of the case before her rested on the issue of, “How do we balance the right to protest with the right to use and enjoy private property?” Greenspon returned to this central question in his summation, claiming it was an easy one to answer. Does a temporary interference into the daily lives of residents take precedence over the Charter-given rights of protesters to express themselves, he asked rhetorically. “We say not so!” he replied. “In a contest between constitutionally-protected rights and the interference in enjoyment of property, there is no contest.”

No limits: In a competition between the enjoyment of private property and the Charter-protected right to free expression, Greenspon declared “there is no contest” and that there should “never be a time limit” imposed on Canadians exercising their essential freedoms. (Source of photo: Valmedia/Shutterstock)

And when the judge provocatively asked him if the protestors should have policed themselves better by packing up and leaving prior to being forcibly evicted – Perkins-McVey didn’t spar only with the Crown’s attorneys – Greenspon shot back eagerly and with flourish. “Poppycock!” he declared. Any claim the truckers overstayed their welcome would amount to an “attempt to retroactively justify why the trucks were led into the downtown core without any time limit,” noting further that the February 7 horn-honking injunction explicitly preserved both the truckers’ right to remain in the Ottawa core and their liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful and safe protest. “They never put a time limit on…freedom of expression,” Greenspon concluded. Nor should anyone.

“Biggest waste of time”

When the trial finally wrapped up on September 15, its 45 sitting days and 13-month duration likely set some sort of record for the Canadian legal system. In every aspect it had lasted far longer than expected, something that was almost entirely the result of Crown tactics and strategy. Even the closing arguments exceeded expectations as the prosecution demanded the right of reply to the defence’s summation, adding yet another day.

Veteran court reporter Aeden Helmer of the Ottawa Citizen, who covered every day of the trial, noted in his blog, “I have never encountered a trial that required 7 days just for closing arguments. I’ve covered murder trials that managed to get through closing arguments (in front of a jury) in a day or two.” According to The Democracy Fund, the prosecution of Lich and Barber constituted “the longest mischief trial in Canadian history”. Echoing Helmer, Greenspon noted that, “I’ve represented people charged with a lot more serious crimes than this, and the trials have not taken nearly as long.” During a courtroom break near the end of the case, Lich’s lead lawyer told a crowd of reporters, only half in jest, “We are going to apply to the Guinness Book of World Records.”

“This is the biggest waste-of-time prosecution in the history of waste-of-time prosecutions,” Toronto lawyer Goldkind exclaimed after the trial wrapped up. “The most serious charges in Canada of a criminal nature often take less than 30 days [to resolve at trial]. That this has gone on for 45 days…must be considered one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian legal history.” By way of comparison, the 1995 trial of Paul Bernardo, one of Canada’s most notorious murderers, was concluded in four months, although it sat for slightly more than 45 days.

“An obscene waste of taxpayers’ money”: High-profile Toronto defence lawyer Ari Goldkind (left) calls the 13-month-long trial of Lich and Barber “one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian legal history”. By comparison, the trial of Paul Bernardo (right), one of Canada’s most infamous murderers, lasted just four months. (Sources of photos: (left) CBC; (right) The Canadian Press/Frank Gunn)

For Goldkind, the political vendetta against Lich and Barber is not only vexatious and unfair but a grotesque squandering of public resources. “Every day the courtroom was filled with this stupid case meant there were other trials for rape, child abuse, sex assault, drinking and driving, drug trafficking that were being delayed,” he says, an assessment based on his own experiences as a criminal lawyer. “This was an obscene waste of taxpayer’s money on every level.” In this observation, Goldkind echoes the work of prominent Queen’s University law professor Bruce Pardy, who has written extensively on how Canada’s courts have become badly clogged and afflicted by delays for nearly all legal procedures.

Punished by Process

In his classic 1979 text The Process is the Punishment, American sociologist Malcolm M. Feeley observed a clear distinction in the form of punishment meted out by the upper and lower courts of New Haven, Connecticut. As the higher federal courts were concerned with serious crimes such as armed robbery, rape and murder, they thus dealt out significant penalties, including lengthy jail sentences and possibly even capital punishment.

The lower courts, however, were involved with relatively minor crimes that attracted suitably lighter sentences. Feeley’s insight was that the true nature of the punishment they delivered lay in the accumulation of pre-trial burdens placed on the accused, such as meeting bail requirements, getting time off work, attending court and so on. By the time a verdict was rendered – whether guilty or not guilty – the “sentence” was essentially over.

This phenomenon has only worsened throughout North America in the ensuing decades, as prominent commentators such as Mark Steyn have noted. Others, like Canadian media icon Conrad Black, use the term “prosecutocracy” to describe the vindictive and unjust manner in which the legal system can pursue a target out of all proportion to the matter at hand. The prosecution of Lich and Barber appears among the most egregious examples of such punishment-by-process yet to be found in a Canadian court.

Ground down by the system: Based on his observations at the County Courthouse in New Haven, Connecticut (top left), Malcolm M. Feeley’s 1979 book The Process is the Punishment argued that the true form of legal punishment often arises from the many pre-trial burdens and obligations placed on the accused – regardless of the ultimate verdict. More recently, conservative commentators Mark Steyn (bottom left) and Conrad Black (bottom right) have amplified this message. (Sources of photos: (top left) ajay_suresh – New Haven County Courthouse, licensed under CC BY 2.0; (bottom left) The Standard; (bottom right) ideacity/YouTube)

Having been identified by politicians in Ottawa as the leaders of a national protest-cum-uprising that allegedly required the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and hence the suspension of Canadians’ essential rights and freedoms, the pair must now fulfill their putative role as arch-villains. But instead of charging them with serious crimes such as sedition or rioting, the worst the police could come up with were mischief and obstructing police. Depressingly – for the powers-that-be – these crimes typically entail only modest sanctions. And based on the experience of other protesters arrested at the same time, Lich and Barber seem likely to be found not guilty as charged. Or, failing that, to receive a sentence no longer than time already served.

And so, in order to validate the (purely figurative) high treason of Lich and Barber, the Crown has had to think outside the box. This presumably explains the legal gymnastics of the Carter application – an attempt at finding Lich guilty of a crime only Barber is charged with committing. But even that seems like a long shot. Which in turn has necessitated the Crown’s ultimate tactic: to drag out the case such that the legal process itself – with all the costs, obstacles, uncertainty, wasted time and personal stress that entails – either spurs the defendants to plead guilty or, failing that, serves as the punishment itself. All before the formal verdict is rendered.

It may also be hoped in some quarters that this delay and obfuscation will lessen the political embarrassment should the entire matter fizzle out ignominiously. If the verdicts are not guilty, or guilty but with punishment as time served, most Canadians may hardly even notice, having grown bored with the whole topic and “moved on.” Indeed, it is possible that Justin Trudeau will no longer be prime minister by the time Lich and Barber learn their fate. And his successor will almost certainly claim that the whole mess wasn’t their doing and that they always had doubts about invoking the Emergencies Act.

Necessary victims: In order to validate the Liberal Cabinet’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, it became necessary to paint the Freedom Convoy as a full-scale threat to public order, and Lich and Barber as notorious insurrectionists. Shown, Barber (left) and Lich (right) are arrested in downtown Ottawa on February 17, 2022 on mischief charges.

It is for such self-serving and, some might say, deeply unjust motives that a petite, devout Métis grandmother has been presented to the world as a dangerous, violent rebel whose mere liberty would threaten the safety of all of downtown Ottawa, and whose subsequent communications on social media might destabilize Canada itself. And why she has already spent 49 days in jail for a crime than generally results in no jail time at all.

This is why Karimjee, the original Crown prosecutor, absurdly argued that the fact Lich had accepted a public honour was reason enough to lock her up for years. And why, when that same over-zealous, Liberal-donating prosecutor thought he had her trapped in another bail breach when she allowed her picture to be taken with lawyers just slightly off-stage, he issued a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest and sent homicide detectives to Medicine Hat to bring her back to Ottawa – who actually placed her in leg shackles. If any of these theatrics was justified, Lich would indeed be the greatest criminal threat this country has seen since the FLQ Crisis or the Riel Rebellion.

Only when the case finally made its way into a courtroom, however, was the true nature of the prosecution’s animus fully revealed. “This should not be the trial of the Freedom Convoy,” Greenspon declared at the outset. Yet that’s exactly what it became: a punitive effort to hold Lich and Barber accountable for the actions of others – most of whom were never charged with anything or who had their charges dropped. As the evidence shows, Lich worked tirelessly to make the Freedom Convoy a peaceful, law-abiding and community-minded event.

Canada’s greatest criminal mastermind? Lich, a peaceful and devout Métis grandmother, has been the subject of intense focus by the Canadian legal system. After her initial arrest, she was re-arrested at home in Medicine Hat and placed in leg shackles for part of her trip back to Ottawa. (Source of photo: Freedom Convoy 2022/Facebook)

And while she was not always successful, whatever failures occurred do not rest on her shoulders. They are the fault of the many other groups, institutions and individuals involved, including the Ottawa police. Throughout the three-week-long demonstration, Lich remained a voice of idealism, love and respect for the rights of all Canadians to participate in peaceful protest. And for this she has been treated with the utmost disrespect, the most obvious evidence being her 13-month, 45-day show trial alongside Barber for a crime of no consequence whatsoever.

Perkins-McVey has said that on November 26 she will provide an update regarding when she expects to reveal her final decision; the verdict itself could still be many months away. Until then, the punishment of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber continues.

Lynne Cohen is a journalist and non-practicing lawyer in Ottawa. She has published four books, including the biography Let Right Be Done: The Life and Times of Bill Simpson.

Source of main image: JuliaDorian/Shutterstock.

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Crime

Trudeau’s pro-transgender regime is a get-out-of-jail-free card for Canada’s most violent criminals

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Canada’s most dangerous criminals are being sent to women’s prisons simply by identifying as such. This can only happen because the country is run by people like Justin Trudeau, who believes gender ideology with every fibre of his being.

You’ve probably heard plenty from Justin Trudeau and his progressive clones about conservative premiers “attacking” and “targeting” the so-called “LGBT community” for legislation protecting children from sex change surgeries. But you won’t hear a word about the victims of LGBT ideology – and you won’t hear a thing about the growing list of insanities inflicted on Canada by the policies they have passed and supported. 

Consider the case of Adam Laboucan, who as a teenager brutally raped a 3-month-old infant and allegedly drowned a toddler – he was convicted only of the violent pedophilic assault, because he was less than 12 years old when he drowned the 3-year-old boy, and under Canadian law you must be at least 12 to be prosecuted. 

Laboucan’s case – which LifeSiteNews reported on last year – was so disturbing that he became Canada’s “youngest designated dangerous offender.”  

Now, according to The Canadian Press, Laboucan is “seeking escorted leave from prison to attend Indigenous cultural ceremonies in Vancouver.” You see, Adam Laboucan has changed his name. He is now known as Tara Desousa, and the CP obediently refers to him by his preferred pronouns, leading to ludicrous sentences such as this one: 

Desousa, then named Adam Laboucan, was 15 years old in 1997 when she sexually assaulted an infant she was babysitting in Quesnel, B.C. The baby required surgery to repair the injuries.

Laboucan, of course, was not a woman when he attacked the infant and drowned the child. He is not a woman now, despite having obtained sex change surgeries since then (he is 43). He is considered so dangerous that B.C. Supreme Court Judge Victor Curtis imposed an indefinite sentence on him in 1999 because there was, in the view of the court, no foreseeable “time span in which Adam Laboucan may be cured.” The B.C. Court of Appeal affirmed the dangerous offender designation in 2002. 

They did so for good reason. Expert psychiatrists stated that Laboucan exhibited everything from “transsexual to pedophilic tendencies.” He was given to self-mutilation and even self-cannibalism. He was promiscuous and volatile, threatening to kill a female guard and behaving so erratically that a 2010 parole review again affirmed his dangerous offender designation due to his problems with “gender identity, impulsive behavior, violence and sexual deviance.” But in 2018, he began to identify as a woman. As LifeSiteNews reported shortly thereafter:  

In a 2021 brief to members of the House of Commons, incarcerated women’s rights advocate Heather Mason told a House Committee that numerous women prisoners had been subject to sexual harassment by males who call themselves females who are living in female prisons. Mason made special mention of Laboucan (Desousa) stating: “One of these women reported that while in the mother-child program, two transgender individuals with convictions for pedophilia, Madilyn Harks and Tara Desousa, would loiter near her and her child, making sexist and inappropriate antagonizing comments.” The person who calls himself Madilyn but was named Matthew has been labelled a serial pedophile with an “all-encompassing preoccupation in sexually abusing young girls.”

Note well: the reason one of Canada’s most dangerous criminals, a man with violent pedophilic impulses and a history of profound mental disturbance, can get sent to a women’s prison is because our country is run by people like Trudeau, who believes gender ideology with every fibre of his being. 

Laboucan’s most recent attempt at parole – in June 2024– was denied, with the Parole Board of Canada stating that that the victim of Laboucan’s assault and the family “have suffered pain, anxiety and anguish and long-term emotional impacts resulting from your offending. Each time you come up for parole, they are haunted by your offending and the damage you inflicted on their defenceless son/grandson.” 

Of course, the government now expects you to believe that these crimes were committed by a woman – and the board did say that “escorted temporary absences” were “the next logical step in reintegration and gradual release,” despite the fact that he is “an undue risk to society.”

Laboucan’s Vancouver-based lawyer, Caroline North, declined to comment on the Federal Court application when asked by the Canadian Press. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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